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In March 1984, 12-year-old Cheri Lindsey was a seventh grader at East Middle High School in Binghamton, New York. She lived with her parents, Jean & David as well as her brother & sister. Cheri was born in 1971 & was the middle child of the family. She was described as a thoughtful young girl who loved music & sports. Despite her young age, she was a responsible, old soul who picked up a part-time job delivering newspapers with the goal of raising money for her teacher’s baby shower.
The Lindsey family of five always had a fantastic time together & David’s job as a Binghamton police officer afforded Jean to stay home to raise the kids. Despite the fact that Binghamton was a very safe town where residents typically left their windows & doors unlocked, David didn’t like the idea of his 12-year-old going door-to-door by herself, but since she was so excited for her new job, Jean agreed to go along on her daughter’s route with her to deliver newspapers each & every day.
However, on Monday, March 26, 1984, it was about 3:30 pm when Cheri told her mom that she needed to collect the money owed for the newspapers along her route. Normally Jean would have gone with her, but because dinner was in the oven, she made this one time exception & allowed her daughter to go off by herself. This single decision is something that Jean says will haunt her for the rest of her life, something she can never forgive herself for.
As an hour ticked by, Jean heard the home phone ringing at about 4:30 pm & it was Cheri’s neighborhood boy who was a friend calling for his routine call that came at the same time each day. When Jean realized that Cheri hadn’t returned from the paper route, she immediately knew something wasn’t right since her daughter was always like clockwork.
Jean waited anxiously over the next fifteen minutes, hoping & praying that her daughter would walk through the front door, but when she still wasn’t home by 4:45 pm, she called her husband to let him know what was going on. David immediately felt something was wrong since his daughter was so reliable so he immediately headed out with his lieutenant along the street where Cheri had her paper route, but there was no sign of her. Worry skyrocketed as they drove along & it wasn’t long before David was sobbing, sick with worry.
David knew in his heart that his daughter, who was a daddy’s girl & a homebody would have never run away as some people initially suggested. The Binghamton PD consisted of about 150 officers in 1984 & being that an officer’s daughter was missing, the department rallied around the Lindsey family to help find their daughter.
Since they knew that Cheri set out that day to walk through her neighborhood, making her collections, a large-scale search began with outside agencies as well as friends, family & volunteers. They wondered if she was in someone’s house along the route or if she’d been taken away in a passing car. As time ticked by, pressure continued to mount since investigators knew that if they were to find Cheri alive, they would have to do it quickly.
Cheri’s cousin, Lauri Tucker, who was sixteen at the time, was extremely close with her cousin & recalls coming home from school that day & being told that Cheri was missing. Since Lauri’s parents were really strict, she spent a lot of time at her Uncle Dave & Aunt Jean’s house since it was always a blast. Since she’d just gotten her driver’s license, Lauri drove over to be part of the search teams.
Lauri didn’t share with anyone that an image popped into her mind when she heard that her cousin was missing; she saw Cheri in her head waving goodbye & knew at that moment, her cousin wouldn’t be coming home.
The next morning came & there was still no sign of Cheri, but search teams continued to comb through the woods & areas around the neighborhood as well as area rivers with the assistance of canine units & helicopters.
Meanwhile, Jean was thinking about her daughter’s paper route & the customers who lived in the homes they delivered to & alerted police about two suspicious men along the route.
The first name she mentioned was a man named James Wales, a 35-year-old father of two who lived with his family seven blocks from the Lindsey home at 6 ½ Surges Street. The man had always rubbed Cheri the wrong way; she couldn’t put her finger on what it was exactly, but she felt that he looked at her weird.
The second man that Jean thought of was someone that Cheri didn’t care for since he smoked cigars. Investigators started at this house, but found nothing concerning. From here, they made their way to James Wales’ home about thirty hours after Cheri vanished.
Wales told officers that he had seen Cheri the previous day when she went missing; he said she stopped by to collect money for the paper at about 4 pm. He paid her the money & she went off on her way, likely to the next house. He voiced his concern for the 12-year-old girl & wondered where she could have gone while officers looked around his house, including his cellar. Finding nothing, they went on their way, back to square one.
Investigators thought of every possibility as to what could have happened to Cheri & compiled a list of customers along her paper route as well as problematic residents within Binghamton.
Police thought back to their visit with James Wales & couldn’t help but recall his behavior while they questioned him. He seemed nervous & on edge, giving investigators the feeling that something wasn’t right.
On a hunch, they decided to bring James Wales into the station while two officers revisited his home.
Mrs. Wales met the two officers outside their home & invited them inside where they also spoke with Wales’ 11-year-old stepson who confirmed he heard Cheri come by the house to collect her money. In this version of events, however, he elaborated & said something exceptionally chilling. The boy indicated that when Wales & Cheri went down to the cellar, he heard the young girl’s screams & when he went down to see what was going on, he saw feet in the air.
Meanwhile, Lauri recalls being asleep in bed when she woke to the sound of their home phone ringing. After her mom picked up, she could hear Aunt Jean’s screams coming from the other end of the line & this was the moment she realized that her younger cousin had been murdered.
While Wales was back at the station being interrogated by Detective Butler, officers at his home made their way down to the cellar & found Cheri’s remains wrapped in a blue blanket & covered by paneling. When Wales was told about what the officers found in his cellar, he sat expressionless.
David recalls the moment the officers came through their front door; as soon as they saw the look on their faces, they knew it wasn’t good. The devastation of learning that their daughter was gone caused Jean to scream & fall to her knees as she screamed to her husband, telling him to kill the man who had done this to their baby. David wanted nothing more than to remove the monster from this earth & didn’t want to know the details of what led to his little girl’s death.
Investigators found Cheri’s earrings in Wales’ dresser drawer. She’d begged her dad for about a year before Dave finally relented & finally let Cheri get her ears pierced. To this day, Jean still wears the earrings that her daughter wore in her final moments, something that makes her feel closer to Cheri.
Regardless of what the officers found at his home, it was Detective Butler’s goal to get a confession from James Wales. After staring quietly & blankly at the officers for some time, he suddenly blurted out, I killed her.
Wales went on to say that she came to the front door to collect the money & somehow they ended up near the cellar door of his home. Detective Butler suspects that he either pulled Cheri down the steps or told he needed to show her something down there, but according to Wales, they fell down the stairs & into the cellar.
As they reached the bottom, Cheri was screaming so he covered her mouth to quiet her & struck her two to three times with a stick, which investigators came to find was actually a table leg. He raped her & put a clothesline over her neck, hanging her from a pipe which led to her death.
Wales told investigators that he brought Cheri’s body into the fruit cellar, wrapped her in the blanket & concealed her with paneling since he needed to get back upstairs because dinner was on the stove for the kids & he needed to finish cooking as if nothing catastrophic had just happened.
David recalls the horrific task of selecting a casket for his child, something that should not have been happening on that random weekday; instead, Cheri should have been in school. Before the funeral began, David & Jean were allowed a quiet moment to say goodbye to their child before the casket was closed. As they entered the room, they were instructed by the funeral director not to touch her face since it had been reconstructed. This was the moment they knew that James Wales, a man who had been a neighbor, was a monster who had beaten their child to death.
The trial was held that same year in 1984 in Broome County Court during which Wales claimed that he was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Unable to bear hearing the brutal details or seeing the horrific images of what led to their daughter’s death, the Lindsey family decided to go out of town while the trial was taking place.
An expert indicated that James Wales had intermittent explosive disorder & had been fantasizing about an act of revenge. Regardless, he was found guilty of second-degree murder & first-degree rape & in December 1984 & sentenced to 33 years to life in prison.
The pain of losing their daughter so suddenly & in such a violent way took a toll on the Lindsey family. David admits that he tried to quiet his grief with alcohol as an escape to numb & cope with the emotions & pain. He held it together in front of his family, but would sneak away at night & drive to the cemetery so he could let out all the emotions as he spoke to his girl. He told her how much they loved & missed her & would never forget her.
Since David closed his emotions down, refusing to speak of Cheri around the rest of the family, this drove a wedge between himself & Jean. However, she refused to allow James Wales to take even more from their family & didn’t give up on their marriage when things got hard.
Jean began setting photos of Cheri out on the kitchen table after the kids went to bed, hoping that David would lower his guard & begin opening up. This was something she did night after night until he finally broke down & faced things head on & realized they could get through their grief together.
During his first parole hearing in 2017, the then 68-year-old James Wales said that the things that the sexual abuse as well as his drug & alcohol abuse were the excuse for what he’d done to 12-year-old Cheri. He acknowledged that he robbed her of everything; graduating high school, having her father walk her down the aisle, having kids of her own. When he was asked why he killed Cheri, he said he didn’t take rejection too kindly & flew into a blind rage. Thankfully, his parole was denied & he remained at Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York.
In 2020, the Lindsey family raised enough money from online donations to purchase the Wales’ home from its new owners & loved each moment of watching the house be demolished piece by piece. The house had come to be known by residents of Binghamton as Cheri’s ghost house.
After the house was leveled, residents gathered & released red balloons in honor of Cheri’s favorite color; one balloon hovered, crossed in front of David & Jean before it trickled away as if it were Cheri herself there with them.
Despite the passage of more than forty years since Cheri has been gone, the Lindseys have never changed her room as Jean didn’t want to let her daughter go. Her stuffed animals remain on the bed while her clothes hang in the closet only to be taken out & washed twice a year. When she feels lonely, Jean goes up to her daughter’s room & visits.
Lauri Tucker, Cheri’s cousin, was inspired to become a police officer after living through the tragedy of her cousin’s disappearance, search & murder. A former sergeant with the New Bern Police Department, she made a promise to her cousin that she would do whatever she could to prevent the events of her cousin’s murder from happening again.
Back in 1984 there hadn’t been a sex offender registry list or the AMBER alert system in place. Lauri made a goal of doing 10,000 child safety kits in honor of Cheri, which help law enforcement have pertinent information of a child in case they go missing. This includes a fingerprint card, emergency numbers, 911 instructions, a personal record card, DNA collection tips & fun quizzes that reinforce safety messages. These kits can be given to law enforcement should a child go missing which contain necessary information for an AMBER alert.
As of 2017, James Wales will be up for parole every two years while David & Jean have vowed that until their dying day, they will be sure he never walks out of prison & after they’re gone, their son & daughter will be there to speak for their sister as well as for them.
In March 2025, Wales went up for parole for the sixth time, 41 years after Sheri’s death. His previous paroles in 2017, 2019, 2021 & twice in 2023 have been denied.
Sadly, David Lindsey, Cheri’s father, died in 2023. Before his passing, the family promised they would continue his fight as long as James Wales had breath in him. Jean Lindsey & her older sister, Shelley Wood, encourage people to write letters to the state parole board in opposing Wales’ release. According to Shelley, during each parole hearing, Wales never takes accountability for what he did to Cheri.
Thankfully, the now 76-year-old’s latest parole has again been denied & he remains at his maximum security prison.
Cheri A Lindsey Memorial Park opened in the summer 2004 & has become a beloved community gathering space that offers a skate park, dog park, walking paths & a public pool. The Forget-Me-Not Memorial Garden was also created & dedicated to all children who have been victims of a crime at the location where James Wales’ home once stood. It’s a peaceful spot to honor these children as well as create a space for families, friends & community members to heal & reflect on the lives that were lost too soon.
References:
- IMDB: The Paper Route – S3.E3
- TheCinemaholic: Cheri Lindsey Murder: Where is James Wales now?
- Sun Journal: Former New Bern officer shares events of her cousin’s murder in popular documentary show
- Press Connects: Cheri Lindsey’s killer to face NY parole board for sixth time
- WNBF: Binghamton man who killed Cheri Lindsey will remain in prison
- Cheri A Lindsey Memorial Park
- Broome County New York: Forget Me Not Memorial Garden
